Friday, December 30, 2011

1506.txt

Glad I can help, even if quite indirectly. I know what you mean about the need for community when under duress. The individual quality of being a scientist works against us in this way. Attached are the original letter and the official UCAR response. I don't know what the lawyers might have written, other than their input to the official response letter. I do know they sought information from Caspar (and myself, but less so). I don't recall if we made available to them our correspondance with Steve Schneider about our responses to the review of WA that McIntyre did, which had a lot of information in it that debunked his claims about withholding contrary results, etc, etc.. In fact, we have never mentioned this to Steve, to make sure that he was in the situation to make editorial decisions as focused soley on the science as possible.

I was wondering if there is any way we as the scientific community can seek some kind of "cease and desist" action with these people. They are making all kinds of claims, all over the community, and we act in relatively disempowered ways. Note that UCAR did send the response letter to the presidents of the two academic institutions with which MM are associated, although this seems to have had no impact. Seeking the help of the attorneys you speak about would be useful, I should think. I know that Mike has said he looked into slander action with the attorneys with whom he spoke, but they said it is hard to do since Mike is, in effect, a "public" person -- and to do so would take a LOT of his time (assuming that the legal time could somewhow be supported financially). If I might ask, if you do get legal advice, could you inquire into the possibility of acting proactively in response via the British system? Maybe the "public" person situation does not hold there, or less so. I only ask you to consider this question on my part; obviously, please do what you deem best for your situation.

Finally, I have shared the MM letter and UCAR response before only with one other scientist, a now retired emminent person here in the US whom I asked to look over all the materials and give me his frank opinion if he felt we had done anything inappropriate. He came back with a solid "NO", and said that what MM were attempting was "unspeakable". Caspar has mentioned that UCAR said to him they did not want to disseminate these materials publically, and I have kept to that, other than the case mentioned. It seems clear to me that providing them to you is appropriate; I have not contacted Caspar to think about it at this point, and don't feel I need to. Anyway, this is just to give you the context on that side of things. I would imagine that sharing the doc's with legal persons you trust would be OK.

Note that I am now out of contact through July 9. I wish you all the best!!

Gene, Thanks for the email of support! I've taken up the idea of asking someone at UEA about legal advice. I would like to see the original letter if possible. I won't pass this on. Did the NCAR/UCAR legal staff put anything in writing, as this might help me decide if the advice I might get here is reasonable? I'm sure it will be and I know I've nothing to worry about, as I've done nothing wrong and neither has Wei-Chyung. It is good to share these sorts of things with a few people. I know Ben and Mike have been through this, but wasn't aware you and Caspar had. Thanks for your strength !

Cheers Phil

Wei-Chyung, Tom, I won't be replying to either of the emails below, nor to any of the accusations on the Climate Audit website.

I've sent them on to someone here at UEA to see if we should be discussing anything with our legal staff.

The second letter seems an attempt to be nice to me, and somehow split up the original author team.

Jones et al 1990 cited a 260-station temperature set jointly collected by the US Deparment of Energy and the PRC Academy of Sciences, stating in respect to the Chinese stations:

The stations were selected on the basis of station history: we chose those with few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location or observation times.

This data set was later published as NDP-039 http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ndp039/ndp039.html , coauthored by Zeng Zhaomei, providing station histories only for their 65-station network, stating that station histories for their 205-station network (which includes many of the sites in Jones et al 1990) were not available:

(s. 5) Unfortunately, station histories are not currently available for any of the stations in the 205-station network; therefore, details regarding instrumentation, collection methods, changes in station location or observing times, and official data sources are not known.

(s. 7) Few station records included in the PRC data sets can be considered truly homogeneous. Even the best stations were subject to minor relocations or changes in observing times, and many have undoubtedly experienced large increases in urbanization. Fortunately, for 59 of the stations in the 65-station network, station histories (see Table 1) are available to assist in proper interpretation of trends or jumps in the data; however, station histories for the 205-station network are not available. In addition, examination of the data from the 65-station data set has uncovered evidence of several undocumented station moves (Sects. 6 and 10). Users should therefore exercise caution when using the data.

Accordingly, it appears that the quality control claim made in Jones et al 1990 was incorrect. I presume that you did not verify whether this claim was correct at the time and have been unaware of the incorrectness of this representation. Since the study continues to be relied on, most recently in AR4, I would encourage you to promptly issue an appropriate correction.

I thought that I should summarize what has happened with the Wang case.

First, I concluded that the claims made about Chinese stations by Jones et al. [Nature, 1990] and Wang et al. [GRL, 1990] were very probably fabricated. (You very likely came to the same conclusion.)

Second, some investigation showed that Phil Jones was wholly blameless and that responsibility almost certainly lay with Wang.

Third, I contacted Wang, told him that I had caught him, and asked him to retract his fabricated claims. My e-mails were addressed to him only, and I told no one about them. In Wang's reply, though, Jones, Karl, Zeng, etc. were Cc'd.

Fourth, I explained to Wang that I would publicly accuse him of fraud if he did not retract. Wang seemed to not take me seriously. So I drafted what would be the text of a formal accusation and sent it to him. Wang replied that if I wanted to make the accusation, that was up to me.

I intend to send the final version to Wang's university, and to demand a formal investigation into fraud. I will also notify the media. Separately, I have had a preliminary discussion with the FBI--because Wang likely used government funds to commit his fraud; it seems that it might be possible to prosecute Wang under the same statute as was used in the Eric Poehlman case. The simplicity of the case makes this easier--no scientific knowledge is required to understand things.

I saw that you have now e-mailed Phil (Cc'd above), asking Phil to publish a retraction of Wang's claims: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1741#comment-115879There could be a couple problems with that. One problem is that it would be difficult for Phil to publish anything without the agreement of Wang and the other co-authors (Nature would simply say "no").

Another problem is that your e-mail says that you presume Phil was "unaware of the incorrectness" of Wang's work. I do not see how that could be true. Although the evidence that Phil was innocent in 1990 seems entirely conclusive, there is also the paper of Yan et al. [Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, 18: 309 (2001)], which is cited on my web page. Phil is a co-author of that paper.

Phil, this proves that you knew there were serious problems with Wang's claims back in 2001; yet some of your work since then has continued to rely on those claims, most notably in the latest report from the IPCC. It would be nice to hear the explanation for this. Phil?